Spring. Spring really had come. The flow of seasons had no impact on what grew and lived in the Moonglade, but it could still be felt somehow. To Angus, it made little sense – or none at all, he himself was not quite certain – but it did not bother him. Springtime always made him feel better, no matter how dark his ever-present fears and worries were. Better, happier, almost joyous. The improvement was – no, had always been significant. But that was a bygone thing, one of many.
This time it was different. This time was an exception, the first of what he was sure would be many. Angus could not feel it, this new spring. He knew it had come, he knew it was there, and yet he could not feel it. Another man would have dismissed it without sparing it any more than a moment of thought, he knew – slightly surprised thought, perhaps – but he could not force himself to do that. Angus Silentwing was not that man. It seemed almost ridiculous to him at times, the notion of something so small, so unimportant, so silly making him afraid. Oh yes, he was afraid – very much so. The elf would have admitted it to none but the empty night, but that did not change what he knew, and he knew that he was terrified.
He chuckled. It was funny. A funny thing to be afraid of. Perhaps he was a funny man to fear such funny things. And that thought, that thought was funny, too.
Not yet. Not yet, not yet.
And there the mirth ended. Not funny; it was cruelly ironic. Spring, it meant rebirth. It meant fresh things, it meant new beginnings, it meant life. But to him it would soon bring his bloody death. Even if he managed to get away from the dark horrors that were the Blackclaws, he would still not be safe. It just might place him in a danger far greater than that. He was the Cenarion Circle’s marionette, now; he was a humwing tangled in their strange killer webs. He did not want to dance.
And then they came again, the memories that bore so many – too many – dark echoes. The Blackclaws. It was a coldly shocking thought, an icy shower of rain to drag him back into grimy reality. It made him pull another fur coat over his head and shuffle closer to the glowing embers before him. They had been a blazing fire not too long ago. How quickly things changed.
A fire. It brought back memories – other memories, some with echoes, some without. He had tried again; he had tried to get rid of the fog inside him, to feed it to the flames – all unsuccessfully. Strange, that was. He remembered them being ever-hungry, the flames, but those memories were from long ago. How long, exactly? Angus could not say. There were too many uncertainties, but there was a bright side to that, no matter how skewed the brightness – with uncertainty came knowingness. A dark kind of knowingness, in this case, but fumbling in the night was easier when a man had hands to reach and feel with than when he did not. Angus knew it was time to give up. He knew that, oh yes, but he could not force himself to admit helplessness. It had seemed strangely simple, strangely easy a few nights in the past, but the Blackclaws had changed that. He thought it had been the Blackclaws. It had to be the Blackclaws; always the Blackclaws. He could not understand why they had had to break into his life again.
And so spring had come. It had come gently, quietly. To Angus, its coming seemed the coming of a raging storm – one that a man noticed no sooner than it was upon him, one that came washing away grime and sorrow, letting all joy foam away in gushes of bubbles, leaving almost nothing behind. Almost nothing. Angus’ hands felt weary, but the thought of life without them was enough to chill even those depths of his heart that never felt fear.
The past few nights – how many? He had lost count; that happened too often – had been a slow, gentle kind of torment. Angus knew an elf who would have likened it to swimming in puffer waters, and that was a strangely apt comparison; he was in puffer waters, and the fish were making their circles around him, not even thinking of touching him, but the sight of their spiked shapes was enough to make him feel them biting and pricking his skin once and then again, and then a thousand times a thousand. Imaginary pain, it was a featherbrained thing to feel, but there it was; a man either acknowledged the tree in front of him and went around it or tried to strut through it and ended up with a black forehead. Angus much preferred the former, but his tree was a wall wider than the sea and taller than the sky, and there was no evasion, no roundabout way to avoid tasting its bitter bark. Still, he would delay trying to chew his way through it for as long as he could – waiting was the best thing that could be done now. Waiting was one of the puffers that were making him cringe so, but there was nothing to be done about that.
And so, the past few nights had been a torment. Waiting – they had been all about that. Oh, Moonshade had been visiting, but those visits were nothing to look forward to, even if they had become daily. Truly, there had not been a single night without the lump coming at least once; not one night of true peace, but instead many with Moonshade showing his useless muzzle without reason, without cause. And still, those visits were a ritual that helped Angus stay focused, if a rather aggravating one. They always were the same – Moonshade came and Moonshade blabbered, and soon Angus found himself trying to stifle yawns and ignore humwings in his head without frowning as if he had swallowed an unripe frostberry. After all, being in the company of a lump did not mean he had to cast all remaining sanity out of his head and remake himself in that lump’s likeness. Though truth to tell, the man could not say those meetings were all bad – Moonshade did his best to bring news from Nighthaven, and some of those snippets were useful in a way, even if most of the time the other elf’s assumptions on what Angus might find interesting were off by an Ancient’s armlength. It had been a long time since he had last needed someone else to be his eyes and his ears, and the man had never thought that need would arise again, but that was what Moonshade had become. A flawed substitute for that other man – Yverian; Elune, he would not let himself forget Yverian – but it would have to do. Broken hands were better than none. No, they were not bad, those meetings. They were a nuisance, surely, but bad was too strong a word.
Angus pulled his cloaks – all white fur, and warm enough to ward off the northlands’ cold – around him more tightly still, and leaned back against the tree behind him, letting his thoughts drift for a moment. A dangerous thing, that, now more than ever, but he had been doing it fairly often recently, and, strange though it was, not once had it led where Angus feared it might. Still, it was walking the heights, but the man was tottering along cliffs as it was, with the Blackclaws in Nighthaven and him not as far away as he wished to be.
And his thoughts did drift, until they were strongarmed back into place by a cracking sound – a foot breaking a twig, no doubt – from the woods. Not the Blackclaws, Angus knew – they might have a turn-stomached frog’s skill with the bow, but he had seen too many times that they were never careless in their hunt – and that made Moonshade the likeliest intruder – the place Angus had chosen was a remote one, far from the usual paths of druids and creatures of the grove alike, and making noise when silence was needed was just like something the miscreant would do. His suspicions were proven true mere moments later, when a reed of a man emerged from the undergrowth surrounding the clearing – trees as massive as those in the Moonglade should have killed it before it had a good chance to sprout, but surprisingly, it lay thick over the land – and bent his head in a mockery of a bow. His grin was genuine enough, at least – a yellow-toothed grimace that twisted a face Elune had not chosen to cast Her grace upon into something uglier still – but even the dimples it made did little to soften the marks of tiredness. The youngling was all joy and cheer now, but by the bags under his eyes and the strained and dusty look inside them, it was plain in moonlight that he had lost sleep – many of hours of it, seemingly – over something, and Angus was fairly certain in his guess that the Blackclaws were not very far from the cause of it; Moonshade thought him a friend, after all. Good-natured, but nonetheless a lump.
‘Sometimes, Moonshade,’ Angus said slowly, a slight slur twisting his tongue – that was no surprise, what with him spending so much time in silence, but still unpleasant in a way, ‘I wonder how a man like you could make his way down into the Dens without rousing the roots and the stones as well as the sleepers.’
That made Moonshade stop, and if his grin faltered for a moment – Angus was not sure it did – it was back to its usual rotten-toothed state momentarily. His eyes were another thing, however – something sharp and, moonlight dear, jovial wiped away the dust that had dulled them. ‘Sometimes I wonder how your tongue doesn’t trip over the things you say,’ the elf spat, no more than a speck of mirth tinting his otherwise flat voice, which did not suit that obnoxious smirk of his at all. ‘And fall and break its – what is it that you say? Mooncursed? – mooncursed spine, too.’
Angus could not help but smile at that, and smile he did – and threw his head back for a quick chuckle, too. There really was no need for that emphasis, of course, and the elf felt a twinge in his chest as he let his shoulders slide back into their hunched posture again; it was silly, worrying over a thing so small as a movement of one’s head, but when a man was laden with stones worth three oaks in their weight, even a grain of sand seemed too heavy to add. ‘Time does not temper your tongue, I see,’ Angus muttered, his low tones sounding odd after all that nearly boisterous mirth. And what he muttered was true – Moonshade had been like that as long as Angus could remember; even when he tried to recall their first encounter in a fond light, it was much too hard to do with that steady stream of graceless insults Moonshade had washed the druid in still so fresh in his mind. The lump did have a sharp tongue, oh yes – it was neither clever nor cunning, that sharpness, but it was there. ‘I wish I could see why.’
Moonshade’s response was a snort.
Elune shelter me. Anything to escape all this.
Silence followed as the young man made his way to the dying fire to sit across from Angus and made himself comfortable – rather slowly, Angus noted – raking four unwashed fingers through his unwashed blue hair and unpinning his cloak – a ridiculous garment, truly, sewn with leaves and oddly long blades of dried grass that, for some reason, refused to break or crumble. It was not meant to last too long, however; Moonshade gave the other elf but a couple quiet moments while he fished out two leaves, green with a faint hint of blue, from the labyrinth of pockets that was his similarly designed robe and placed them in his mouth to chew – then he let his tongue flap again, and the things that slid off it were just as unpleasant to Angus’ ears as before, if not exactly in the same way. ‘Things aren’t good,’ Moonshade more grunted than spoke. ‘The Blackclaws.’
‘What about the Blackclaws?’
‘Seems to me they’ve finally realised you’re not in Nighthaven. Took them a turning, nearly, but there it is. Fools.’ Moonshade spat one of the leaves into the heat of the embers, then resumed his noisy chewing, earning a highly displeased frown from Angus. Not that he seemed to mind, that lump – if he did, not a twitch of his face slipped by to put the truth in moonlight. ‘Saw them putting their hogsnouts in the dirt just out of town today. They think that’s tracking.’ Another snort showed what Moonshade thought.
‘Moonlight dear, they know,’ Angus breathed, burying his face in his palms. That was all he could do – he had been sure that he had another moon-turning yet, and now there was only this awful truth. It tasted rancid on his tongue. His life was home to many bygone things, but the Blackclaws had never been among them – no, that threat would hound him until his daybreak hour, Angus was sure – and he had been wrong to let himself forget that. He had waited too long, and now he would have to face them again. He knew he could not bring himself to do that – not the way he was now. But what else is there to do? Elune!
‘No need to curse the sun before it rises,’ Moonshade put in levelly. ‘There’s a way out of this.’
‘Is there? I am not so certain.’ Elune’s truth, he was not.
Moonshade rubbed the bridge of his nose lazily, still chomping on that leaf of his, and leaned back slightly. Perfectly indifferent. If there was one thing Angus envied the man, it was this ability not to care too much. ‘Of course there is.’ The youngling narrowed his eyes to tiny slits – when had they become so glazed? Perhaps it was the moonlight – his mouth twisting into a teeth-showing smirk. ‘There’s a caravan leaving here in just a few nights. That… Vana, is it? That tauren, Landcaller told me about it, ah…’ He paused, putting a long-nailed finger to a patch of bare earth and drawing a wonky line in the dirt. By the interested look on Moonshade’s face, it might have been the sun rising at midnight. ‘It’s taking her herbs somewhere… Somewhere south, maybe.’ The man shook his head. ‘Taking some sort of trader’s route across the mountains. And you can go with it.’
A caravan taking some off-road route? The timing was almost too perfect, but it just might work. Angus would get far away from the Blackclaws, and he would have much more time than a single moon-turning to think and weigh. There was much to think about, oh yes; he had made a decision about those mooncursed men many years in the past – too many years in the past – and Elune knew he did not wish to break the words that bound him, but the truth was that there may not be another way out of this.
No. No, I have sworn. The tree may be rotten, but it will not break. But Elune, it just might work. It might work! And yet…
‘How many nights, exactly?’ Angus asked, and winced immediately after – his head bowed down, he tried to keep anxiety out of his voice as well as his face, but still it sounded too strained, too demanding. Moonshade knew his fright as it was, of course, but there was no need to make it too clear. ‘How many nights until it leaves? If they are searching the woods, I may not have nights.’ That was true, too – well, that was a possibility. Truth to tell, however, it was far from a strong one. The place the druid had picked was as far away from Nighthaven as a man could go without treading into the mountains or too open a clearing, and the likelihood of the Blackclaws moving so deep into the forest in just two nights’ time was almost none. That meant he was being paranoid again – a featherbrained thing to feel, that paranoia, but it was another grain of sand added to the stones he bore.
‘Two nights,’ Moonshade said just as calmly as before, his grin unaffected by the harshness of Angus’ tones. But was he just as calm? Or was he calmer? ‘Just two nights. Look, Silentwing, they didn’t even have the head to wait for you to leave that awful house of yours! There’s no way they’ll find you before you leave.’
I do hope he is right. I do hope.
But all Angus said was a simple ‘perhaps’, spoken crisply, but in far softer a voice than before, accompanying it with a slight tilt of his head. That should be enough for Moonshade – the man was not one to push a suggestion too far – not with Angus, at least – which, unfortunately, did not hold true for all the other things the coarse imbecile said. And it was – Angus all but smiled when the youngling gave him a satisfied nod. There would be no more pushing, and that was just as well. He would go with Nava’s caravan – he thought he would – but there were things to be done before he went. The elf realised he had forgotten all about them – no, he had put them out of his mind – but now that he had a way out before him, they were back and unwilling to retreat into the shadows again. That was strange – he did have a way out, and it should have had the opposite effect, but there it was. Perhaps the strange killer webs were tearing, but there were things to do; perhaps he would not have to dance, but Elune, he had to know the steps. It all lay clear in his head – not the schemes he had woven upon emerging from the demon’s den – no, those had been broken by the Blackclaws’ arrival – but something nearly as good – and to put this plan in motion he had to know the dance he did not want to do.
Moonshade did not need to know that much, though.
‘Around this time tomorrow, Moonshade,’ he said, breaking the stretching silence, his voice perfectly cool now, ‘I will be waiting by the falls. Be there, and know the where of the Blackclaws.’
Moonshade’s smile really did falter then, and not just for a moment. His crooked lines in the dirt already forgotten, the man raised his smoky eyes to fix a gaze of equal scrutiny – well, if a look as diluted as that could be called scrutinising – on Angus, his mouth working – or chewing – silently for a moment. ‘What is this about?’ he finally asked roughly, and this time with no hint of mirth on the hard, if no longer sharp, edges of his voice.
‘I am going to bid farewell to Nighthaven, of course.’ How easy it was, spinning words into weaves with such delighted precision when wild fear had ruled him mere minutes ago. Angus chuckled at that – genuinely this time – and took a care to add another ‘not yet’ to the wall of his thoughts when Moonshade gave him an odd look. It was easy, and darkfire take him if he would ever forget it again. ‘You need not worry your head, child.’
That snapped the twig. Moonshade’s previously concerned face twisted into a grimace of unrestrained indignation, a thoroughly displeasing sight with looks such as the man possessed, as he rose to his feet too quickly by half, gathering his ridiculous cloak around him and thrusting a simple silver pin through it to hold the garment in its place, and spat the remaining leaf, now no more than a shapeless wet lump of dark green, into the fire.
‘Is that my dreamfoil?’ Angus asked, adding a tinge of sweetness to his voice.
Moonshade’s response was a filthy, shaking finger, raised to point toward Angus accusingly. As if he had a right to accuse!
‘I do not care what you do with yourself, but never do it before me, Moonshade.’
The lump worked his mouth silently for a moment or two, undoubtedly biting off oaths he wanted to scream, and then turned on his heels to storm out of the clearing – he really did storm, kicking up dirt and leaves that followed him in flurries, caught in the wind of his passing, as he walked – no, stomped off into the woods. With hands clenched into fists, eyes making fire, and a face like a thunderhead, more pink than Moonshade’s normal blue, it might have been a worrying sight to some, but Angus had seen it too many times to do more than laugh. There was an urge to do just that, oh yes, but he restrained it for another moment yet, choosing instead to simply shout, all care lost to him now. ‘The falls, Moonshade, not here’ was what he shouted, and then he did laugh – he lay down on his back and laughed, throwing all those fur cloaks off of him – suddenly the air did not seem chilly at all – and rubbing the heels of his hands against his eyes; he laughed loudly – that rusty, but still somewhat melodious sound could hardly be called boisterous – and he did not even try to mute it, no thoughts of threat in his head. There was no room for them – all of it was taken up by mirth. It was a good kind of mirth, mirth that did not make twinges in his chest, mirth that had been truly rare in the past year – or had it been longer? – of his life. And, in keeping with its scarceness, this mirth passed momentarily. It passed, and it left emptiness, and there was no ‘not yet’ to fill it now.
Angus’ senses returned to him as he sat up, both he and them rather dazed in their manner and their pace, and let his gaze rest on his three bags, neither large nor small, strewn around the campfire in a haphazard crescent. His bags; there was something in them that he needed. He had forgotten all about it – he forgot too many things as it was, and still the list kept growing with each night as it passed. The elf scrambled over to where they lay, and, making himself comfortable close to the heat of the embers, dragged the largest of the bags onto his lap, unpinning its lid with a swift flick of his hand. Moving so quickly felt strange with his mind in such a confused, torn haze. Putting the unnerving feelings it brought out of his thoughts, Angus thrust his hand inside sharply, and, after a few long moments of blind fumbling, he knew what it was that he wanted – his hand clenched around the sharp planes of a small box, wooden and unadorned by the way it felt against his palm, and drew it out of the darkness of the leather sack – the bag was little more than that, really – and into the bleakly bright light of the Moonglade’s night. The feeling had been right, mostly – the box was of plain light wood, devoid of any ornaments or carvings, but the lid and the sides were far more rounded than he had thought. Strange, how he could not remember the look of things he saw each day, even when the daily rituals went on for years. The box was one of those things; gifted to him by Nava Landcaller not long after she first came to the Moonglade, it was what the tauren called a timekeeper. Angus had seen other timekeepers in his life – mostly in the eastern lands; those children, the humans, they called them clocks, a word the elf tripped over even in his head – but this one was nothing like them. He pressed the sides of the box and the lid sprung open with a creak, revealing seven ticking wooden protrusions, all of varying thickness and length and slightly darker than the rest of the timekeeper in their colour; Nava called it a simple mechanism, but to him, it was nigh incomprehensible. Still, at least it did not fail its purpose, and that was what counted when dawn broke – if Angus’ quick measure of the slowly moving cylinders was accurate, Mulgore would see the sun rise in just over an hour, and while that did not say anything definite about the northern forests, it was close enough an estimate to go by.
Closing the lid with a snap and then a click, Angus slid the timekeeper into a pocket in his shirt and lay down on his back again. The forest floor felt cool even through the single cloak he had not shed, but he did not mind – the remains of the fire still gave off just enough warmth, even if the embers had lost their glow. Another hour yet. Most of the night elves he knew – and tauren, too – appreciated the shelter from the flow of time that the Moonglade’s perpetual night provided, but he had never shared their feelings; time gave life rhythm, and without rhythm things turned too loose by half.
Another hour yet. He did not want to sleep, but sleep took him.
![[Image: moonseparator_zpsfe9e31a4.png]](http://i582.photobucket.com/albums/ss269/dilnikas/moonseparator_zpsfe9e31a4.png)
Angus Silentwing had had the dream again, and there was nothing the serenely fierce babbling and splashing of water – a sound of which the air was truly full; full to the point where there was room for nothing else – could do about the bitter taste of it. So many things were bygone; so many things came and went, and while some of them did linger – like the thoughts that were but whispers in his head, and yet somehow seemed to shout and yell about the hidden weight they carried – while some of them did linger and remembrance did echo, no echoes clung to the man as strongly as this awful, Elune-forsaken dream. Five times had become ten and then more still in a turning of the moon; Angus had stopped counting – well, he had tried to – but that did not change the feeling restless days brought. The dream – no, the nightmare, it had been little more than an unpleasant hindrance at first, but now it was far past that; now it was a thing that came with fear and, lately, a sense of utmost urgency. Still, for all the persistence with which it clung to him, it went away with all its grime when the moon rose. Not completely – never completely – but at least it faded. It had faded today, too, but the bitter taste remained nonetheless.
What is keeping him?
There it was again. This and other similar thoughts had been cutting through the tired, shadowy haze that was Angus’ mind like blinding streaks of white for Elune knew how long, and still Moonshade was nowhere to be seen. Angus had been certain he would come – he was still certain, in a way, but that did little to soothe the impatience bubbling inside him. And there were other thoughts, too. Had he taken things too far, perhaps? Surely not. Nothing was too far for the lump, and no matter that it did not come off of his own tongue. Surely not. Angus was certain; he had to be.
Surely not was right, it turned out – it took him another short while, but Moonshade did show himself; for once, he came without noise in his company, appearing far too suddenly. Angus nearly jumped when this lanky reed of an elf slipped out of the bleak shadows right beside him – luckily, he managed to force his startlement down to a barely visible shiver at the last moment, and thanked the moon for that. Moonshade rarely noticed anything of importance, but he could not risk showing his feelings too freely, no matter how slight the chance of it registering in the dense child’s useless head.
‘What kept you?’ Angus asked quickly – just a little too quickly, perhaps – to mask the little surprise he did show, deliberately keeping his voice soft and smooth. It felt good, finally being able to ask that question, but there was no need to show his frustration, either.
‘The Blackclaws,’ Moonshade spat, accompanying his words with a derisive snort. ‘Took me a while, but now they’re busy looking for you in all the wrong places. Shouldn’t bother you before you leave.’
The wrong places? The lump had actually tried to lure them away! ‘I asked you to find out where they were,’ Angus said quietly and coughed when he felt a tightness grip his voice. Running such a risk! Not that much bigger than the one he had asked the youngling to run, truth to tell, but still he felt something, not quite anger, swell in his chest. No, he would not be angry. He would not. ‘I did not ask you to… do what you did.’
‘No need to curse the sun before it rises.’
That mooncursed saying again. Angus wanted to growl, but instead he just asked, fighting to keep his voice level, ‘Is that all you have to say, Moonshade?’ The words came out in much cooler a ring than the man had thought they would, and that was something to be pleased about.
‘You should be thanking me.’ Moonshade did growl, though for what reason, Angus could not imagine. ‘Now you’re free to hug this place goodbye and have a night of peace. And the fools did not catch a whiff of me! Does that count for nothing in your eyes?’
Angus winced at that, and did not bother trying to hide it this time. Admittedly, the lump’s words held truth – he was free to do those things, and it did count for something – but Elune knew he would not thank that man. He knew it was useless stubbornness, an odd thing for him to give in to, and yet for some reason, that did not make him want to change his mind – instead, it made that thing in his chest swell still further. Angus forced it down, however, and gave Moonshade a small nod; he did not trust himself to speak right then – all that walking the heights he had been doing had him teetering on an entirely different kind of edge, a fall from which could land him either in whispers cold as ice or infuriated shouting. The possibility alone made the elf want to shake and shiver and claw at his own skin until that edge went away and solid ground took its place, but there was hardly any chance of that happening.
Moonshade’s cough, deliberately loud and rasping, cut through the endless roar of the waterfall, dragging Angus out of his thoughts. ‘Oh yes,’ he said quietly, rubbing the side of his nose with a bony finger. It was too easy, getting lost in the slowly swirling currents of the mind, and far too embarrassing when someone noticed and ended the swim prematurely. ‘Let us go.’
And they did go, and everything went more smoothly than ever. Having expected the worst, he found that to be a pleasant surprise. Perhaps he was too critical of Moonshade. The lump was rash, foolhardy – surely, he was – and he made all the wrong decisions, but it was plain in moonlight that most of what he did worked, and that could not be truthfully said about Angus’ plans. No, he would not apologise, and the youngling would not get gratitude – Moonshade hardly knew his place as it was, so there was no telling what that would do to him – but he just may place more trust in the man – or try to, at least.
And so, everything went smoothly – until Angus found himself standing in the middle of his bedroom, his back stiff, trying to shake the feeling that something in his home was not quite right. He had done what he had come for – the letters he had received from the Circle were now safely tucked away in one of his shirt’s many pockets – and yet he could not bring himself to leave the house. Hours had passed since then with the elf pacing back and forth through hallways and corridors, checking every room again and then again, but now he stood still because he thought he saw the cause of his worry – a cupboard, an unadorned thing of pale grey wood, just like most of the furniture he possessed; a cupboard with its doors ajar. No, the feeling was wrong. Everything was fine – surely he had left it that way. Surely. But he hadn’t, and before too long, despite the sheet of fear that had been draped over him by a cruel hand, Angus felt his feet carry him forward; before too long, he stood before the cupboard with his eyes resting on what seemed to be a note placed on one of the shelves; before too long, he felt his hand reach in and take it. The writing was simple but precise, elegant but not too delicate – it was not entirely unfamiliar, that script; something tugged at Angus’ memory, though he could not, and, truth to tell, did not want to place his finger on it. And suddenly that sheet of fear was a thousand sands, a thousand times a thousand, placed upon the stones he carried.